


Bread

by Katalyna_Rose



Series: Elissa Cousland and Solona Amell [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 10:51:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14447751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katalyna_Rose/pseuds/Katalyna_Rose
Summary: Solona never expected to be a wife, to have a husband and a home. In the Circle she'd been taught that she was terrible, worthless, that she'd never succeed. And though her newly wed husband tries to break her of those thoughts they still haunt her when she fails to learn how to do simple tasks like bake a loaf of bread for her hungry husband.





	Bread

The bread was a mere lump of inedible goop again, half of it burned and half undercooked, and Solona was near tears. She'd been practicing for weeks, trying to teach herself something that all women of Ferelden were supposed to know that she'd never been taught in the Circle. She sniffled as she pondered how to hide her latest failure from her new husband. She had been trying since their wedding to become a good wife, one he could be proud of, and thus far it had been an utter failure. She could brew a tea to soothe his throat using herbs she found by the side of the road and she could hunt better than the village boys who lived outside the facility where ex-Templars recovered from their addiction. She could help those men, who sweated themselves into a puddle with fever and vomited anything solid and often begged to relapse. She could soothe their stomachs and warm their chills and cool their fevers. But for the life of her she could not figure out how to be a wife.

The burning in her eyes grew stronger as she stared at her failure, a lump on the chopping block that didn't even look like bread. It began to swim before her eyes but she just stood there, frozen in place by her shame. She was so absorbed in herself, in the damnable bread that she just couldn't get right, that she didn't even hear the door to the little cabin she shared with her husband open and then close again, didn't hear anything until he greeted her as he always did.

"There you are, love!" he called when he spotted her in the kitchen, and she nearly jumped out of her skin. Panicked, with unshed tears swimming in her eyes, she picked up the inedible lump and chucked it right out the window that stood open to the summer breeze and into the bushes. The heavy footsteps of a man used to plate armor stopped at once, still halfway across the distance between where she stood and the door. "Is... everything alright?" His tone was uncertain and she felt like a fool. She hung her head and let her shoulders droop and she still wouldn't turn to him. She could feel the mucus brought on by tears beginning to tickle her nose and she was forced to sniffle or let it run down her face, and the sound betrayed her. The thumping of her husband's feet in his soft-soled boots hurried to her side and his warm, strong arms drew her close. One warm and calloused hand tilted her miserable face up to him and he brushed aside her strands of softly curling brown hair.

The concern so clear on his face made her lean into his chest and reach up a hand to touch the strong line of his jaw and the little scar on his upper lip. A hank of blond hair fell across one eye and she carefully pushed it back for him. "What's this, now? Has someone been cruel to you, my love? Did something happen in the clinic?" She shook her head mutely and he bent to kiss her brow. Tall as she was he was still a head taller and twice as wide. He could wrap her up in his body and she'd disappear completely, but she loved that about him. "Then what is it, Solona? Won't you talk to me?" His voice, so accustomed to barking orders on the battlefield or in the training ring, was soft for her, gentle. Even the mabari that was always at his heel and liked to growl at strangers was gentle with her. And suddenly it was too much, her shame too great to be hidden any longer. The stinging in her eyes became tears and her sniffles became sobs and she clutched at his chest.

"I'm so stupid," she sobbed into his tunic as he held her close. "Stupid and ignorant and incapable of the simplest-" She was cut off by a sudden yank on her shoulder and his lips descended upon hers to silence her.

When he pulled back he kept one arm around her waist and one on her cheek to make her look at him, his gaze as intense as it was when he gazed upon her writhing beneath him in their wedding bed. His words were not spoken in the gentle tones of the husband, but rather in the harsh commands of the soldier as he said, "You stop that right now, Solona Rutherford." Her new name would always make her grin, but right now she didn't feel as if she deserved it and her lips only twisted grimly. "You think I don't hear the Circle in your tone when you talk like that?" he asked her after a moment. He shook her gently with the hand on her cheek. "I know where those words come from; I hear them in my head, too. But now you listen to me, instead. You are _perfect._ Brilliant and kind and compassionate and strong. The work you do in the clinic is beyond anything I could dream, certainly far more than I could accomplish alone. I love you, Solona, and I won't listen to you tell yourself these lies."

Solona gazed up at him for a few moments in shocked silence. Then, "Cullen," she cried, and stood on her toes to kiss him, one hand behind his head to pull him down to meet her. He did more than that, his arms tight around her as he lifted her off her feet and sat her on the bare chopping block behind her. His hips pushed their way between her knees and she wrapped her legs around him. His hand tangled in the fall of her hair, a favored spot of his, and the other rested on her back to keep her close. When they finally broke apart for air she was smiling at him despite herself and he smiled back as his thumb traced restless circles beneath her jaw.

"Now tell me what this is  _really_ about," he requested, still gazing at her with loving concern. She hesitated, her smile faded and her eyes flicking away, and he sighed. "Or I'll go digging through the bushes to find whatever you're hiding from me." The threat made her wince because she knew he would and the last thing she wanted was for him to find the lump before the birds and mice finished with it.

"Alright, Cullen. Alright," she finally said, capitulating. She took a deep breath to gather her courage, then told him, "I've been trying to learn to bake bread. Nothing fancy, just a simple bread with simple grain, cheap so that all my failures won't be noticed. I can't get it right, no matter what I do! It's too hard or it doesn't rise or it's impossibly lumpy or I somehow manage to burn it! I'm  _terrible_ at all the things a wife should know how to do! I can't get  _any_ of it right!" Burning tears began to leak out of her eyes again, but Cullen gently wiped them away.

"Oh, sweet Solona, no," he cooed, kissing her brow again. His gentle smile tugged at that little scar and made her want to kiss it, the kindness in his golden eyes made her heart melt for him as it always had. "Just because you never learned how to cook while you were locked up in a tower for being what you are doesn't mean you're not a good wife. Maker's breath, I'm certainly not the husband you deserve." She sucked in a breath, shocked and horrified that he would ever think such a thing. Her mouth opened to protest but he laid a finger across her lips. "I wake you with my terrors in the night, sweating and screaming at my dreams and sometimes I don't even recognize you until morning comes. I spend more time in the clinic than I do in our home and I ask so much of you there."

She took his hand in hers to remove his finger from her lips. "Now you stop it," he told him with the authority of over a decade of leading a group of fifty mages through the wilderness in her voice. "You never once asked me to help in the clinic but I help there because I need to, for me. And so what if you have night terrors, I have dreams of my own. And you remind me when I'm being silly-" His narrowed eyes stopped her, made her correct herself, "-when I need to unlearn the things the Circle taught me. Growing up I knew that I would never marry, never have a home of my own or any autonomy at all. That changed when the Circle fell, and I got my autonomy, but I still never thought I'd ever marry. Then you knocked me into the mud that day and we each thought the other was a bandit." He smiled at the memory of the first time they'd seen each other in close to thirteen years and she smiled with him. "You're more husband than I ever thought I'd have, and certainly the only one I want." His smile widened and he closed his eyes as he leaned his forehead against hers. For a time they were silent, just basking in their love for each other as she sat on the counter and he kept her wrapped around him.

"Who's teaching you?" he asked at last. She pulled back to look at him curiously. "The bread," he clarified. "Who's teaching you to make it?"

Sheepishly, she pulled the recipe from her sleeve and handed it to him. "I got this from a woman in town. I've been trying to learn." He unfolded the little scrap of parchment and frowned at it.

"No pictures, no diagrams, no explanations of any of it," he observed, then looked up at her with understanding. "Baking, from what I understand, is a lot like fighting. If you don't know what a pommel is or how to tell which edge of a blade is sharp, you'll never be able to win a duel. If you don't know what the dough is supposed to look like when properly kneaded or how long to let it rise, you'll never bake a proper loaf. You, my love, are the recruit who tries to win a duel without having ever seen a knife, and though I applaud your determination I think you need a little help." He handed back her recipe and kissed her brow. "Go back to the woman who gave you this and ask her to show you. There's no shame in being untutored, my love, I promise." For the first time in weeks, Solona felt hope that she could learn, and her heart swelled with love for this man she called husband.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I thought about calling this Bread is a Metaphor for Gender Norms, but I thought it would be a bit too on the nose.


End file.
